Butler nods at Darnell and she tucks the tear gas rifle to her shoulder and stands while Butler braces for the shot. Darnell ducks back beneath the window a second later and whispers, “It’s security glass. They must have replaced it recently.”
Butler nods, curse words zinging around inside his brain. He thinks about it for a moment and comes up with a new plan. He gets the attention of Goodman and mimics turning the knob.
Goodman nods. Butler and Darnell position themselves near the doorframe and wait for him to open the door. Carefully, Goodman turns the knob and opens the door about six inches. That’s all Darnell and Butler need. They jam the barrels inside, fire the tear gas canisters, and step back. Goodman and his team have their pistols out in a firing position as they stagger their entries through the door, one right after another. Once they’re clear, Butler and Darnell pause fifteen seconds and enter.
In their haste to end the hostage situation no one considered the difficulty of being able to see through the cloud of gas vapors. Butler clicks on a flashlight to find that only makes visibility worse, much like car headlights in the fog. He kills the light and tucks it into a pocket of his vest. Sweat is dripping down his forehead and onto the mask, making a bad situation worse.
Somewhere on the other side of the room, a shotgun roars and then roars again. Unable to communicate with the others, Butler has no idea what’s going on. He jumps when someone fires a pistol right next to him. Tracing the direction of the muzzle flash, Butler peers through the lessening fog, trying to find out what the target was. While he’s looking, he’s nearly bowled over a moment later when someone backs into him. Butler whirls around and his heart stutters.
The inmates also have gas masks.
Butler pulls the trigger three times and backpedals as the man lunges for him. After two steps the man begins to falter and collapses to his knees. Butler puts a bullet through the top of his head and begins searching for more targets. It’s still hard to see, but the cloud is dissipating. He can see another inmate creeping up behind someone over by the windows. Butler takes aim and fires two quick shots, hitting the man center mass.
The inmates might have masks, but they don’t have body armor.
Other pistols bark and the shotgun roars again. Butler wonders how many inmates are really in the room. Someone latches on to the wrist of his gun hand and Butler tries to twist his arm away, but it feels like it’s trapped in a vise. For the first time today, fear rears its ugly head as Butler fumbles for his knife with his left hand.
The man keeps twisting Butler’s arm and it feels as if his shoulder joint is going to give out any second. Feeling the pistol slipping from his grasp, Butler burns through his last reserves of energy trying to maintain his hold on his weapon.
If he doesn’t, he dies.
Butler flinches when someone fires a pistol right next to his head, the muzzle flash nearly blinding him. The man’s grip on his arm slowly begins to loosen and Butler eventually yanks his arm free. He switches the gun to his left hand and starts scanning for targets again. Someone had propped the door open and the cloud of gas is rapidly retreating.
After several moments of chaos and terror, Butler makes his way over to a window and cranks it open. That helps with the vapors, but it doesn’t do much to alleviate the pain in Butler’s right arm — the arm he uses to fill cavities and set crowns. With the guns now silent, Butler works his arm in a circle as he surveys the damage. Bodies and spent shell casings litter the floor and Butler’s hoping his men were successful in rescuing the hostages. Deciding that’s the most important question, Butler hustles out of the room and down the stairs. He takes off the sweat-filled mask, takes a breath of fresh air, and makes a radio call. “Butler to Parker, over.”
A couple of seconds later, he responds. “Go for Parker.”
“Status of the hostages?” Butler asks.
“Two males accounted for, sir.”
Butler mumbles a curse word or two. “What happened to the other two?”
“They were gone long before we arrived, Scott. Two females. And they didn’t die pleasant deaths.”
Butler stares out the window at the faint smudge of orange along the horizon and blows out a shaky breath as tears shimmer in his eyes. The long night is over, but the nightmares will linger long after. He puts the handset to his lips. “Roger, Freddy.” Butler wipes his eyes, takes a deep, calming breath, and sends out a radio call to Sergeant Vasquez.
“Vasquez, here, sir,” he answers a second later.
“I need a body count from upstairs.”
“Already on it, sir. I’ll have the number in a moment.”
“Roger,” Butler says. He looks up to see Lydia Darnell slowly descending the stairs. When she strips off her mask Butler can see tears are streaming down her cheeks. He steps over and meets her at the bottom, wrapping his arms around her. “It’s over, Lydia,” Butler whispers in her ear.
“It’ll never be over for me… Captain,” Darnell says between sobs. “I worked… with those people… laughed with… those people, and cried with those… people. And now… they’re all gone.”
CHAPTER 80
Target 1-A is a hack none of the grad students have performed before. Hassan doesn’t know if the same is true for Nazeri, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he had — probably more than a few times. They won’t know if this particular attack has worked for several hours or even days because they don’t have eyes on this target or any real-time access. What is assured is that every member of the team, if discovered, will be hunted to the ends of the earth if they’re successful, and that thought makes Hassan Ansari nauseous, especially in light of what he’s planning to do. If he could stop it, he would. But he can’t and there is no way for help to arrive in time.
If Hassan had any doubts about Nazeri’s intentions, they evaporated when the three armed men appeared. Dressed in tan fatigues, their uniforms are absent of any insignia and offer no clues as to their allegiance. All three men are dark haired with dark, olive-colored complexions, and all three look as if they were cut from the same cloth. If Hassan had to guess their origins he’d lean toward them being Iranian, or somewhere around that region. Regardless of their nationality, they’re here now, and Hassan and his cohorts must find a way to mitigate their presence.
And Hassan has a plan. A plan he can’t share with his cohorts now that Jermar’s chat program has been compromised. It will spell doom, but it just might save their lives.
“Have you acquired the device?” Nazeri asks Sheezal.
“Almost,” Sheezal replies.
Hassan is amazed that the general public remains uninformed about the dangers of their obsession to acquire wireless devices. They can’t seem to grasp that if something connects to the Internet, it’s hackable. Despite the continuing drumbeat of hacked databases, hacked nanny cams, or stolen usernames and passwords, their insatiable appetite for wireless devices continues unabated. Not only are consumers connecting wireless devices to their home networks, they are also allowing the implantation of wireless medical devices into their own bodies.
And it’s one such device that is the target of Nazeri’s current attack.
Unbeknownst to the general voting public, America’s newly installed president relies on a pacemaker to keep his heart in rhythm. It is a closely held secret to prevent the public from believing their new leader is infirm. Hassan has no idea how Nazeri received the information, but he has it, along with the precise serial number of the device implanted in the president’s chest. With that information, and access to the wireless network the device communicates with, Nazeri can alter the device’s settings to speed up the heart rate, drain the battery, or turn it off altogether. Hassan knows that Nazeri’s plan is to choose the speediest outcome and, in this case, he’s planning to accelerate the president’s heart rate.